Quick Take
Neighbors disagree with the project, and city councilmembers have criticized developer Workbench's approach to the five-story, 59-unit redevelopment of the Food Bin. But neither is likely to stand in the way of the project in California's new era of state-mandated housing development.
Over the past 75 years, Santa Cruz-born-and-bred Doug Martine has witnessed more than a few transformations in his hometown.
Speaking from the home he’s owned for more than 40 years at the corner of Laurel and Mission streets, he reflected on how, as a child, he commuted to Bay View Elementary School on a tricycle via a narrow stretch of Highway 1 – a sharp contrast to the speedy, four-lane corridor it is today.
Martine is now steeling himself for another looming change in his neighborhood: the transformation of the decades-old Food Bin and Herb Room into a five-story, 59-unit apartment project.
The project’s height and density will be somewhat of a reset for Mission Street, where few buildings rise even above a single story, and none over three. Martine and many of his neighbors disagree with the development, and some city councilmembers have publicly criticized Workbench, the local developer leading the project, for its approach.
However, in the current chapter of California housing development, neither neighbors nor politicians have the influence they once had to kill the apartment building. The Santa Cruz City Council is set to take a final vote on Tuesday, but it’s a choice between two options: approve the project or face the specter of a lawsuit by the developer that the city is likely to lose.
“The developers have a pretty strong hand; they have the state behind them,” Martine told Lookout on Friday. “If the city denies them the permit they can sue the city. I think the city is listening to us, and I think the city council wants to provide a just solution to the situation. But their hands are tied.”
There’s been a lot of talk over the past few years about California’s new housing reality. For the city of Santa Cruz, the Food Bin redevelopment might be the preeminent example of what’s to come.
In the face of a worsening housing crisis, the state has not only multiplied the amount of market and income-restricted housing units communities must build but also, for the first time, put teeth behind those requirements. With the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development watching over their shoulder, cities and counties now have little, if any, latitude to say no when a project includes affordable housing and meets local and state laws. In order to deny a project, the city would need to prove the proposal has a specific and adverse impact on the community’s health and safety. Absent that, the state says the project must be approved.
Despite being much denser and rising two stories above anything else on Mission Street, Workbench’s Food Bin redevelopment fits snugly into what’s allowed under state law. The project will offer eight very-low-income units, which allows Workbench to take advantage of state density bonus laws that offer incentives such as unlimited height in exchange for including a certain number of low-income housing units.
To Mayor Fred Keeley, this is part of the “new world order,” in which the state has anointed developers as the power brokers. Under the former rules, the city council could require significant changes to a project, such as minimizing height and density, or requiring more parking without concern over whether the project might still be feasible. Under new heightened scrutiny from the state, local politicians cannot make changes that would effectively tank a project. Keeley said this is a change the community does not yet fully grasp.
The city and city council have some control in setting broader local policies for zoning (where housing can go) and objective design standards (niche details on building aesthetics and materials). However, the community has already decided those issues, and developers who offer affordable housing now must only work to align their visions with that relatively broad legal frame in order to get their projects approved.
“If the city council used to have 100% of the authority over new projects, we probably have 20% of that power now,” Keeley said. “What can we do? I think we can try to work with a developer on negotiating small changes, but the developer has most of the power, and the developer is going to largely get what they want.”
Keeley admitted that 20% might even be a stretch, and is largely retained in the city council’s and planning commission’s ability to impose certain conditions on their approval. The planning commission mandated 79 conditions on the development, including that the project’s first-floor commercial space — already set aside for a revamped Food Bin and Herb Room — could not be a fast-food or grab-and-go restaurant, and that the developer install a 6-foot solid wall or fence between the new building and Martine’s home.
The conditions of approval, though not insignificant, can no longer strangle a development into infeasibility. There was talk that the city council would try to require Workbench to shrink the building from five stories to four. Workbench’s co-founders, Jamileh Cannon and Tim Gordin, told Lookout that they would not agree to accept it.
“That’s illegal to mandate that or ask that of a developer,” Cannon said on a Thursday afternoon in Workbench’s airy downtown Santa Cruz office. “I can’t stop what the city council is going to ask or what the public is going to ask. We can do our best to accommodate neighbor requests where we can and where it makes sense for the project. But taking a story off is just a nonstarter. That’s a hard no.”
Politics have been essentially booted from today’s housing development arena. Cannon, who has worked in the industry for more than two decades and has been running Workbench with Gordin for eight years, called it a “total sea change … just a really exciting time to be doing what we’re doing.” However, she says the team at Workbench is not immune to what this means for the community.
“This is a big deal; the state landscape has changed to the point where not a lot of [community control] is allowed, and that doesn’t feel good for the community,” Cannon said. “So how do we mitigate that? How do we hear the voices that are reasonable and thoughtful? The system hasn’t caught up to the law. So, how do we adjust that?”
In the past, neighbors could raise objections at planning commission or city council meetings and the city would often send developers back to the drawing board. Today, neighbors still show up at planning commission and city council meetings, but there is little anyone can do to force developers to make significant changes to their projects.
If neighbors hold onto an outdated sense of influence, it can turn those planning commission and city council meetings into an emotional pressure cooker that sets up the public engagement process to fail.
“It very much used to be that you had to be friends with everyone [in order to get something built],” Gordin said. “We still want to maintain that, but do I have to? Not anymore … because we know we’re following all the rules. How do we find that right place between needing everyone to love us and not caring if anyone likes us? For us, it’s really important to maintain our name and integrity and help people understand that what we’re doing is by the book.”
Last Thursday, Martine and a handful of neighbors met with Workbench and Councilmembers Scott Newsome and Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson to air grievances and attempt to align ahead of Tuesday’s scheduled vote. The conference was “well-needed and well-done,” Martine said. The neighbors voiced concerns about the shade created by the building’s height, and the impact on Martine’s solar panels. Workbench is not going to shrink the project, but it has offered to pay Martine $10,000 as a remedy for blocking his solar panels from the sun. “It’s an insult,” Martine said. “It’s not about the money.”
Solar and political power diminished, Martine said he still plans to attend the city council meeting Tuesday, if only to make a final plea for the project to slow down.
“This building is going to be here forever, let’s take our time,” Martine said. “This is the first building over three stories on Mission Street. This is going to open up the floodgates, and everyone is watching how we handle it, and how we’re able to manage it.”
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